Web Scraping with Java – Good Online Courses in 2022

Web scraping is an incredibly useful tool for people looking to build their website or data collectors mining metadata from other websites. It’s an essential skill for online marketers and is often highly valued by employers.

If you’ve been interested in becoming a website scraper but don’t know where to start, then you’re in the right place. In this article, you will find the best resources available to start web scraping in Javascript, using the various tools the programming language provides its users. Your journey to learning web scraping in Java begins here.

What is Web Scraping?

Web scraping is a coding method for extracting useful data from websites. You can scrape the metadata from images, text, headings, and almost every other aspect of a website to obtain information that isn’t readily available. 

Price changes, location data, and general website changes are all accessible pieces of information through web scraping.

While web scraping is reasonably simple, you have to have some programming knowledge to do it effectively. Knowing how to interact with websites using Javascript is half the battle. Once you have a good understanding of Javascript, web scraping becomes a relatively easy task. 

You can probably learn the basics in an hour or less if you have a bit of technical knowledge to start with.

Web Scraping: Best Language to Use

Most online courses on web scraping teach how to do it through Python, a popular programming language. Python is a multifunctional and relatively simple programming language that many programmers use daily. However, it might not be the best programming language to use for web scraping.

Javascript has multiple tools you can use for web scraping, and it’s more adaptable than Python to the various programming languages used to build websites. As such, Java may be the best programming language to use for web scraping. However, it all depends on your preference.

Best Online Courses for Web Scraping with Java

These are the best academic courses to become a web scraper available online today. 

Packt – Learning Web Scraping with Javascript [Video]

“Learning Web Scraping with Javascript” is an hour-long online video course from the online learning platform Packt. Packt’s course teaches users how to perform web scraping through Javascript and Node.js.

In the early parts of the video, you’ll learn the basics of web scraping, including why people do it, how you can do it, and how to examine the information you get from scraping static web pages. Later on, you get hands-on experience constructing usable scripts in Java and Node.js, using popular websites like Airbnb, Craigslist, and more as example templates. 

Mustapha Mekhatria, a tech consultant and professional Javascript programmer, teaches this course. Mustapha has loads of experience in different areas of website development. If you have a subscription to Packt, you can access the course for free. Non-subscribers can purchase the course for $129.99 or FREE for 7 days.

Udemy – Professional Web Scraping with Java

Udemy is a top-rated and useful online learning center that has courses on every subject imaginable. Udemy’s course on web scraping, “Professional Web Scraping with Java,” is taught by successful entrepreneur and software developer Patrick Meier. 

The course runs just over one hour long, making it accessible for professionals. The task-oriented class asks users to complete each chapter using their browser’s developer tools to perform web scraping test runs on different websites.

You can pause and return to the course whenever you want once you purchase it, so you can always go back and refresh your memory whenever you’d like.

The “Professional Web Scraping with Java” course costs $74.99. Udemy frequently runs price specials, so be on the lookout for price drops that make this course available for much less.

Best Books for Web Scraping with Java

Here are the best books to learn how to perform a Java web scrape like a professional. 

Hartley Brody – The Ultimate Guide to Web Scraping

“The Ultimate Guide to Web Scraping” is one of those e-books that only comes around every so often. There’s so much to learn from Hartley Brody, a programming professional highly proficient in several coding scripts. 

In this book, the author provides a comprehensive rundown of the best web scraping methods using different programming languages, including Java and Node.js. The guide explains how to perform web scraping ethically. 

Hartley argues why web scraping is a legitimate method for data collection—and shouldn’t be looked down upon by the ethical hacking community.

When you purchase the book, the author gives you access to the content on laptops, Kindles, and iPads, making sure you can read it no matter where you are or what device you use. 

Ryan Mitchell – Instant Web Scraping with Java

At only 72 pages long, “Instant Web Scraping with Java,” by Ryan Mitchell, is a short and comprehensive read on performing web scraping through Javascript, Node.js, and Cheerio. 

With this book, you’ll learn how to set up various bots to scrape websites for metadata automatically and upload it to your preferred data collection resource. Not only that, but it offers a general overview on how to write code in Java, how to check for errors in your code, and how to get around website security so you can execute your scrape quickly and effectively. 

This web scraping resource is one of the cheaper options out there. Along with many other courses and books on Packt, it’s available free with a subscription or for a low fee if you don’t have one.

Conclusion

Using the resources listed in this article, you should be well on your way to becoming a professional website scraper. Every course here provides a similar general overview of web scraping with Java, but you may find that one course does it better than another. 

While they usually cost money, there are often ways to get them free or with a hefty discount. Give the free ones a try to see if you’d like to expand your web scraping education with some of the paid options. 

About Author: Christoph is a code-loving father of two beautiful children. He is a full-stack developer and a committed team member at Zenscrape.com – a subsidiary of SaaS industries. When he isn’t building software, Christoph can be found spending time with his family or training for his next marathon. (See image att.)